Mike Elgan at Cult of Mac: "It must surely be a sign of the impending apocalypse that Microsoft's operating systems have 'more taste' than Apple's. I'm referring, of course, to Apple's inexplicable use of skeuomorphic design in iOS and OS X apps, and contrasting that with Microsoft's stark avoidance of such cheesy gimmickry in the Windows 8 and Windows Phone user interfaces. A skeuomorphic design in software is one that 'decorates' the interface with fake reality - say, analog knobs or torn paper. The problem is worse than it sounds." Won't come as a surprise to anyone that I wholeheartedly agree with this one. iOS and Mac OS X are ruined by an incredibly high Microsoft BOB factor. I have no idea how - or if - Apple will address this, or if the current downward spiral is going to continue.

The one difference in what apple used to do is the animations bore information, like a window shrinking to a specific location on the dock. Windows is mainly eye-candy. I don't want transparent menu bars, I want them small and unobtrusive. I want easy to click buttons and don't care about rounding and gradients. But now Apple is getting into the nonsense. The animations are meaningless. Instead of being able to see extra titles, we get icons on an eyecandy bookshelf or magazine rack. The spine of the book's image takes up valuable screen space. Aargh.

Gutenberg didn't come up with something that looked like script handwriting when he came up with printing.